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adeelarshad82 writes "The federal government and Hollywood teamed up to seize domain names of seven sites that allegedly trafficked in copyrighted movies without due payment. The so-called 'Operation in Our Sites' sting targeted TVShack.net, Movies-links.tv, Filespump.com, Now-movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, PirateCity.org, zml.com, NinjaVideo.net, and NinjaThis.net. The operation was run by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, in conjunction with several Hollywood studios. Unlike past anti-piracy efforts, the sites did not actually offer the movies for download, but instead streamed the movies and TV shows against ads. Previously, movie crackdowns had concentrated on sites that distributed movie files, most recently using the BitTorrent protocol."

Corporation and Terrorism are not mutually exclusive. The effect of terrorism is that by harming a few people you hurt the majority by creating fear and thus terrorizing them, reducing their quality of life and freedoms. This also does not require blowing yourself up (hence the reason the term 'terrified' does not mean 'blown to bits'). If people stick to this proper definition (instead of modern sensationalism) it becomes very clear this applies to the media corporations tactics. They sue a few (actually thousands, more than have been blown up by Al Qaida) to terrorize others, and nobody knows if they will be sued (the little fact of downloading is not even relevant, anyone got sued by them).

So you Americans *do* need to fear terrorists (and thus some corporations), it's just that your idea of what terrorism means is all FOXed up.

In our defense, we are, for the most part, reactionary lower-level mammals.

I kid, I kid. But seriously...fellow Americans, stop being so terrified of anyone that looks lightly tanned, stop believing everything the government tells you, and for all that you think is holy, stop watching mainstream news. Remember: just because you agree with it doesn't make it unbiased.

I find it disturbing that yesterday I saw this in an AP story at Yahoo News, where they said "Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials worked with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security".

I went to link it in this comment today, and it's been edited; it now reads "Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials worked with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and other government agencies."

I agree with you; DHS is on the wrong side here, and the entire government as well, in all liklihood. Obviously the corporate press says whatever the government wants them to say, and the corporations are the ones who pay for elections, so they effectively own our government.

Others say that, and then become 'terrorists'... The phrase is used so loosely it is used often instead of: revolutionary, guerrilla's, resistance fighter, or plain old heroes. It depends completely on perspective... the Germans called the Dutch who blew up their trains and transports 'terrorists', but we now call them heroes. And the patriots who fought in the civil war would also have been called terrorists, and they would have gone down in history as such if they would have lost...

All it takes to confuse the two is the perspective from which you are viewing them. One man's "terrorist" is another man's "freedom fighter". Do you think when the American Revolution started that the British were calling them "freedom fighters" or "treasonous rebels"? Whether or not you are a "terrorist" can depend on whether your side won or lost.

You are confusing being a terrorist and being called a terrorist. Terrorism has a very strict definition. Your "freedom fighter" and "treasonous rebels" analogy is completely not comparable as the two terms have nothing to do with terrorism. What's so hard to understand about a word that is completely defined and without ambiguity?

You are confusing being a terrorist and being called a terrorist. Terrorism has a very strict definition. Your "freedom fighter" and "treasonous rebels" analogy is completely not comparable as the two terms have nothing to do with terrorism. What's so hard to understand about a word that is completely defined and without ambiguity?

Please enlighten us, as the definition of terrorism [wikipedia.org] has its own wikipedia page with over 70 citations that we've never been able to agree on a concrete definition of what is a terrorist act. The UN has a political definition that is more fuzzy than a kitten, and comprehensive studies show there's very little common ground except violence or threats of violence.

For example, to pick apart the UN definition: "Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of pe

As I already said, the definition of the word terrorism is rather straight-forward: the use of force, or the threat of force, against a people in order to coerce them. It's not difficult to understand. Whether certain acts are classified as terrorism has nothing to do with the definition.

Fighting a government has nothing to do with terrorism - it's fighting the actual people themselves. Your Norwegian example is rather specious. By your definition any act of war is terrorism, which is clearly bullshit.

Write a letter to the editor. Put in a freedom of information request. Bring up discrepancies like this at political debates. Take out ads. Make noise. Run for office.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most

I do, frequently. Oddly, the corporate State Jorrnal-Register has never printed a single one, while the independant (and free as in beer) Illinois Times almost always prints them. Writing a letter to the editor does no more good than writing your corporate-owned congressman if it isn't printed.

When George Ryan ran for Illinois Governor against a retired schoolteacher, he outspent the teacher ten to one. He barely won, but he did still win, despite the bad publicity over the bribery scandal that ultimately put him in Federal prison.

Give me Bill Gates' money and I might have a chance, even being honest. But that's just not going to happen.

I'd lose.
You are probably right that you would lose eventually, when you got high enough up, unless you take on money from corporate sponsors. But you can still have an effect at the local level, and it is easy to get involved in local politics. For one, it doesn't pay well, so often you would find yourself the only man for the job, and for another, a lot of people in local politics are just using it as a stepping stone.

That's not what terrorism is. Nearly, but not quite. Terrorism is the use of, or the threat of the use of, force against a population in order to coerce them. Fear is not the end goal, but a means to that end - namely that people listen to the terrorists. That's why talking to terrorists, instead of fighting them, is the only way to end their violence. Terrorists couldn't care less about the freedoms of their target population - they just want said population to listen to their (often just) grievances.

If you want to learn something about corporations, and why you should fear them, then watch "The Corporation". It's a movie-documentary... and at least when I last watched it, it said it was a free download... so the fact that the 7 websites were taken down at least shouldn't affect your education:-)

Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience.

Like it or not corporations have made America into the economic giant it is today. And we all benefit from them. Only a corporation could take a product (like an iPhone for example) and turn it into a billion dollar industry overnight.
I recommend "The Company, A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea" http://www.amazon.com/Company-History-Revolutionary-Library-Chronicles/dp/0679642498 [amazon.com] by the editor the The Economist. He makes the point it wasn't England that colonized the world, it was companies, The Dutch

I saw this yesterday evening and submitted it, but my emphasis was on something that really pissed me off. The Department of Homeland Security was in one it! Pirates are terrorists now, it seems.

I fear for my country; the corpofacists are ruining it for the actual human beings that live here, and with corporations allowed to donate to both major party candidates, I see no way this will ever change. The government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" has perished from the earth. We now have a g

You know, I can't shake this suspicion that I have the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) people might possibly have something better they could be doing with their time than taking over websites.

It is interesting to note that when corporations don't want a federal agency to enforce the laws then that's what happens.

And when corporations do want a federal agency to actually enforce law's then they get their way there too.

You're absolutely correct, in modern America the rights of the corporation, the

Guess what, I bought movie tickets to the latest Star Trek and Batman Begins. And I'm living in Malaysia - one of those infamous pirate countries. Over here the cinemas are packed for some movies, but not others. LOTR, Titanic, Avatar, and yes High School Musical and Twilight.So IMO if Hollywood does stuff right, they can make money and keep making money for quite a while yet. Stop making shit people don't watch.

BTW High School Musical is cheap stuff LOTS of people watch, so it's very profitable. If I were

Why do you got to drag immigrants into this? We are all from the planet earth they have just as much right to be in this country as you do. What needs to be fixed is how we distribute welfare and how we tax those who live here. If we switched to a sales tax from an income tax then immigration status wouldn't matter anymore since everyone who lives here would be paying the same taxes. Unless you are a Native American, then you have no more right to be here than they do.

I wonder if they are pursuing any of the advertisers that were advertising on those sites. If not, that's sort of like busting the illegal immigrants without going after the business that hired them.

Or it's like busting illegal immigrants without going after the grocery stores that they shop at, or busting the manufacturers of the processors in the illegal immigrants' mobile phones. Or it's like busting pedophiles or red-light-runners without going after their employers (and their grocery stores).

By and large, Illegal immigrants are coming here because there's work for them ("they're stealing our jobs!") and there are more opportunities here than where they came from. How does this not apply to the employers who illegally employ them?

It was unclear whether or not the federal agencies actually seized and confiscated the servers hosting and streaming the pirated content, although the ICE said that it had worked with officials in the Netherlands to execute search warrants for some of the domain names and content.

This article is completely silly. It sensationalism based upon speculation. Do real journalists exist anymore ?

This particular site, while I'm glad it's not, is conspicuously missing from the list. Was it omitted for some reason? If so, what reason(s)? Could it be its high profile and popularity? Could it be the matter of international relations? It is not outside of the range of possibility for the U.S. to inflict its will on the.ORG tld.

The thing about ninjavideo that I always found interesting (and what i had thought would keep them online), was that the site did not actually host the files it was streaming, but only provided links which used some sort of weird java popup that you had to keep running in the background which acted as some sort of intermediary to actually start the stream from files with obfuscated addresses hosted on 3rd party hosting sites (think megaupload).

I guess it all comes back to the question of if whether having a link to somewhere else that hosts copyrighted material is itself infringement, and unless the ninja admins manage to beat the MPAA lawyers, it would seem we have our answer to that.

The real shame is that the site was super useful for finding archived tv shows (especially documentaries from nat geo and the bbc and the like), but i suspect linking to the big name movies is what got them shut down. Such a waste - I don't even understand why people would want to watch the cams in the first place.

Actually, I don't think it really matters if the sites hosted files or linked to them. This is clear use of a combination of fear, battery and good old fashioned bullying. They don't even have to win the cases since they can take the sites down straight away, confiscate the equipment, reclaim the domain names, etc. They can then use their significant resources in a war of attrition on the pirates.

Sites that link to torrents are treading a very thin line, and it's only the fact that Google and every other se

If you knowingly abet someone committing a crime, that itself is a crime. Similarly if a court judges that your actions knowingly aid the commission of an actionable civil tort, that itself can be actionable.

This was an open question until it was decided in the courts. Now, linking is also not allowed either.

I'm not really sure I see why so many slashdotters are so worked up about this. This is US property that is having its IP rights violated--it's a valid case, it is settled law. While you might disagree that it is possible to take down every site with ripped content, there are a million other laws that are that way too and still we prosecute offenders. Murder isn't going to go away because we prosecute it, b

So, it's easier to get US government to shut down some domains pirating movies, than to shutdown domains used by phishers, scammers and all the other types that are actually hurting 'ordinary' people (no matter how dumb those people are)?

Pirating directly hurts *publishers*. They are *specific* entities with financial interests so they go after *pirates*, *ninja's* etc. Phishers and scammers however, go after YOU. The large corporations are not affected by idiots that send their lifesavings to a clever fucker(s) in Nigeria—and neither is your government. Besides, the government doesn't work for you (contrary to what you may think).

Americans lost control of their government years ago. It's now operated by corporations that will al

One, Movies-links.tv doesn't stream video, nor does it embed any movies in their site. What they do is provide links to where you can stream videos around the web and give the users the ability to report if the stream is working or not so that finding streaming video is easier.
They confiscate the domain for that? That's like arresting me for telling you to go to the crack house down the street if you want to buy crack. Maybe it's not cool to give you that information but I don't think it's illegal. Really? It's illegal to let people know where they can find video streams?
Anyhow immediately after the Feds seized the domain a replacement one was created: http://www.watch-movies-tv.info/ [watch-movies-tv.info] and you know how I know this? Because when I googled Movies-links.tv it was the second link that popped up. So wait a second? Why is it okay for google to tell me where I can find Movies-links.tv but not okay for Movies-links.tv to tell me where I can find video streams?
Whatever. Who knows how long it took for this "operation" to get approval, pass the paperwork around, select a operational task force, come up with an action committee, decided on a communication strategy and plan the concerted effort.... I'm pretty sure it only took the people at Movies-links.tv about 5 minutes to register a new domain though.
Nice work Fed's.

And yes in many states it is illegal to do so. The reason being to go after mobster like tactics. Things like "I was not there when Benny committed the murder." Yet he instructed Benny to do so and not only to do so how to do so. And he could say it like "now Benny there is a box with a picture in it (I do not like this person) and there is some money in it and a gun, if the person pictured were to disappear I probably would n

Wow, and you think these foreign companies should care about what's legal in your state? Why should they? The internet isn't American. These companies have every right to operate legally based on the laws of the country they live in.

Why didn't they just confiscate the servers that have the data? Why didn't they arrest the people commiting these crimes? They had to have known how easy it is to put up another domain. They didn't because they can't. They know they don't have a legal basis to prosecute them bas

That's like arresting me for telling you to go to the crack house down the street if you want to buy crack. Maybe it's not cool to give you that information but I don't think it's illegal. Really? It's illegal to let people know where they can find video streams?

Which would be "Conspiracy to sell a controlled substance" & could end up giving you 5+ years in a state prison. Welcome to the police state, have a nice stay.

And vehicles can't sell drugs either, but they are seized everyday for that very thing. You are the one that is incorrect. You are enabling the crime of purchasing crack by telling someone where to get it from. That will get you conspiracy charge if the cops can prove you did it or have enough witnesses that say you did it. Thanks to our War on Some Drugs, conspiracy no longer means that you actually have to conspire with someone.

If the police used your logic, I could beat the crap out of people (but not kill them) with carte blanche until all the more serious criminals were behind bars. Then I could downgrade to something like property damage until all those criminals were behind bars...

Law enforcement... enforces laws. They really shouldn't be responsible for picking which ones to enforce.

Another one of you with a to long list of what the government should be putting as a priority.

Murder - check they should protect us from this.

Illegal immigration - there is no such thing, if you can afford to live somewhere you should be allowed to, where you were born shouldn't matter. Unless you're a Native American, what right do you have to call anyone else illegal?

Pedophiles - might want to work on this definition some more, but once they get it nailed down that would be good. Arresting people

When I hear a subset of the/. crowd claim that individuals should be allowed to "share" music files for free without fear of copyright lawsuits, I respectfully disagree (in general), but at least I get where they're coming from.

But I see a lot of people here wanting to defend sites that provide a means for anyone to watch movies on demand, taking a profit and not passing any compensation on to the rights-holders... which I guess makes sense if you think there shouldn't be copyright at all, but in that case my disagreement with your position is perhaps a bit less respectful.

Particularly intersting since any site that isn't engaged in copyright infringement gets screamed at if they dare make you look at an ad.

Seems to me taking the position against the rights-holders has become a knee-jerk reaction.

If these sites were actually hosting the infringing content, I'd agree with you, but they're not. They're only hosting links. Rather than busting these sites, why not bust the sites that are actually serving the content?

But here's the thing: You do realize, don't you, that their rights are not contingent on your approval of their product offerings? Either copyright is valid (in which case it is still valid even though they don't offer the product in the form you want) or it isn't (in which case it would remain invalid even if they offered the option you want).

A site that has the bandwidth to share 600mb to ~x gb clips in whole or part on demand?
Or are they are going after the link sites under cover of the "streamed" term?
So where are the magical streaming servers?

So a link hunt for the indexing and compiling of external links.
If the sites that point to the files dont exist then the files cannot be found?
To what link depth will they go until they rise up to the search engines level?
Physical file ~search engine~ link site ~search engine~ forum ~search engine~ search engine cache.

The government, hence immigration, does what corporate interests want, which is not roundups.

If you're a Hollywood exec, illegals mow the lawn, clean the house, clean the pool, service the wife - all good things. Those illegals are not going home, brother, not going home.

Meat processing plants use immigration as part of the HR process. They feed names of activists, malcontents, injured workers to the immigration office and then the roundups begin. Immigration gets to pretend publicly that they're doing something and the meat plants maintain a well-behaved slave-labor force.